You are who you hang out with

Some quotations make you laugh out loud—and then stay with you, poking at your thoughts for days.

Here’s one that did that to me recently, from the TV series Justified, based on Elmore Leonard’s stories:

“If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day, you’re the asshole.”

So much said, with so much economy!

Make no mistake: the world is crawling with assholes. They’re out there in force—the oafish, the inconsiderate, the egotistical, the graceless, the domineering, the sinister. Boors, braggarts, blockheads, bullies, bounders, bigots, blowhards, backstabbers, bores. And that’s just the letter B.

Turn the page to C and it gets no prettier: churls, chumps, cranks, curmudgeons, cowards. An entire carnival of human failings.

You’ll bump into them daily. The trick is not to waste too much energy on them. Smile, sidestep, carry on. You won’t fix the world. You can only stick to your own values—and one of those should be this: try, really try, not to be an asshole yourself. You’ll slip, I’ll slip, but the effort matters.

And here’s the deeper sting: if you keep meeting assholes everywhere you go, maybe they’re not the problem. Maybe you are. If your circle is made up of cads and clowns, if your calendar is filled with crooks and charlatans—then guess what you’ve signed up for.

We attract what we are. We become who we hang out with. And before long, we’re the leading lights in a community of assholes.

We are social animals. The people around you—friends, colleagues, even casual companions—act like mirrors, amplifiers, and sometimes moulders. Behaviours, moods, even character traits ripple through groups. If you spend your days around deadbeats, dirtbags, and double-dealers, you’ll start breathing some of their air. In subtle ways, you pick up their gestures, their complaints, their assumptions.

Science has a term for this: social contagion. Emotions, norms, attitudes spread among people almost like viruses—not by force, but by proximity, by repeated exposure. Studies show that both positive states (like happiness) and negative ones (anger, cynicism) transmit through social networks. So when your circle is full of assholes, it’s not just annoying; it warps what feels “normal” to you. You begin tolerating behaviours you’d otherwise reject, and sometimes worse, you lean toward them.

Let’s also be honest: being an asshole isn’t a permanent job description. It’s a role any of us can slip into when tired, pressured, or provoked. The danger is pretending it only ever applies to others. Every one of us has those lapses—the sharp put-down, the graceless snub, the selfish move. The line is thin, and we cross it more often than we admit.

The flip side, though, is that the same social contagion that spreads meanness also spreads decency. Spend your hours with those who are kind, generous, and quietly wise, and their habits start rubbing off too. Their calm steadies you, their patience tempers you, their humour lightens you. You inhale their air as well.

Which brings us back to the quotation we began with. If you keep finding yourself in a sea of assholes, ask why you’re still swimming there. The world doesn’t hand you perfect companions, but you do choose where to linger and whom to keep close. Choose better, or risk becoming exactly what you complain about.

THE SIGNAL IN THE NOISE

Churlishness is contagious—but so are kindness and grace. Choose your infection wisely.

 

Like it? Hate it? Engage here